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We’re still having colder than usual weather, including a rather weird graupel storm last Sunday that I got stuck in traffic in for a long time. I seemed to then come down with a cold for a couple of days in the middle of the week. And things continue to be super busy at work.

Once again I bring you the Friday Five: The top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts).

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Once again stories that didn’t make it into the Friday Five, or new developments in stories that did, have come to my attention. So I’m going to share them with you, along with some commentary and context.

Many new developments related to the Parkland shooting: Sources: Coral Springs police upset at some Broward deputies for not entering school. Turns out, not only didn’t the armed deputy who was on school grounds specifically to guard the students just hunker down and hide for the entire shooting, the other deputies from the same county office all did the same thing when they arrived. Only the city police actually entered the building to confront the shooter.

Just one more reason why arming more people doesn’t lead to children being safe.

A lot of idiots out there are sharing the conspiracy theory posts that these high school kids who are confronting lawmakers are fake. Given that all the tech companies have pledged to try to root out fake news, we need to ask, Why Can Everyone Spot Fake News But The Tech Companies? After multiple tragedies and national security disasters made worse by hoaxes and misinformation, why is this even a question? The article explains.

In a typical handgun injury that I diagnose almost daily, a bullet leaves a laceration through an organ like the liver. To a radiologist, it appears as a linear, thin, grey bullet track through the organ. There may be bleeding and some bullet fragments.

I was looking at a CT scan of one of the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who had been brought to the trauma center during my call shift. The organ looked like an overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer, with extensive bleeding. How could a gunshot wound have caused this much damage?

The reaction in the emergency room was the same. One of the trauma surgeons opened a young victim in the operating room, and found only shreds of the organ that had been hit by a bullet from an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle which delivers a devastatingly lethal, high-velocity bullet to the victim. There was nothing left to repair, and utterly, devastatingly, nothing that could be done to fix the problem. The injury was fatal.

Finally, I want to end on some good news: Oregon legislature passes bill strengthening state’s gun laws. In Oregon and many other states it is already illegal for someone with certain types of domestic abuse convictions and such to own guns. The problem in those states that have them is the “boyfriend” loophole. Most people convicted of domestic abuse wind up pleading down to a misdemeanor charge, which doesn’t kick in the federal ban against felons, right? And statistics have shown that the number one predictor of whether someone will go out and attempt (or commit) a mass shooting is past domestic abuse, so many states amended laws over the last few years to include the misdemeanor abuse charges in the gun ban. Except that the misdemeanor only counts if the person who committed the abuse either had shared living quarters for a certain number of months with the victim, or if they are married to the victim. So boyfriends who beat their girlfriends before tricking her into moving in with him or marrying him can still buy guns. No matter how many different girlfriends they abuse over the years.

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Seattle is in the middle of a record breaking cold snap, even while other parts of the country are experiencing record breaking heat. We seldom get snow in Seattle at all, and this winter we’ve had it several times. They’re saying it’s going to be this cold for several more days, at least. And the same large atmospheric phenomenon giving us all this icy weather it also what’s making it so warm elsewhere.

Once again I bring you the Friday Five: The top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts).

Death:

Billy Graham: Neither prophet nor theologian. I so seldom agree with George Will, but maybe only a curmudgeonly old ultra conservative can get away from saying (among other thing) in an obituary: “Graham frequently vowed to abstain from partisan politics, and almost as frequently slipped this self-imposed leash, almost always on behalf of Republicans… On Feb. 1, 1972, unaware of Nixon’s Oval Office taping system, when Nixon ranted about how Jews “totally dominated” the media, Graham said “this stranglehold has got to be broken or this country is going down the drain.” He also told Nixon that Jews are “the ones putting out the pornographic stuff.” One can reasonably acquit Graham of anti-Semitism only by convicting him of toadying.”

Even a Graham can’t save Trump. (This is more about Franklin Graham and his ilk and Trump, but the opening paragraphs nicely sum up the way Billy fit into the lives of many, many evangelicals in the 50s through at least the 80s)

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It’s been a weird week for us. My hubby caught another cold. Work has been a weird mix of “Rush! Rush! OMG Please hurry!” and “let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” This weekend we’re host Writers’ Night, meeting a friend for a birthday celebration, and will try to see Black Panther.

Once again I bring you the Friday Five: The top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts). This week I’m also including for links related to the 19th mass shooting of the year, because awful news sometimes needs a separate category.

Jeff Sessions Celebrates “Anglo-American Heritage of Law Enforcement”. A lot of people keep defending this on the grounds that Anglo-American is a technical legal term used sometimes used to refer to the U.S. interpretation of common law. But it wasn’t in the prepared speech, it is something he added over the advice of others, and every racist dog whistle that ever existed is technically a term of something that exist. Doesn’t make it not racist.

Videos!

Former GOP House Rep. David Jolly: If You Want Any Action On Guns, Democrats Must Flip The House:

"Republicans will never do anything on gun control," says former GOP Rep. David Jolly. "The idea of gun policy in the Republican party is to try to get a speaking slot at the NRA and prove to that constituency that you are further right." pic.twitter.com/4ijiJ4ZwKW

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Work was less tense this week as we scrambled to make the crazy deadline and now we’re picking up loose ends and planning for the next crazy deadlines.

Welcome to my Friday Five: The top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts). Also this week I’m including five stories from my local news sources.

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This has been a weird week. Except it isn’t that weird, because in the thirty (30) years that I’ve worked in the software industry, this has been something that occurred several times each year. We had an impossible deadline. Everyone worked extremely long hours (for which we aren’t paid overtime because the suits figured out years ago that you could demand impossible results that require enormous amounts of extra time from people while implicitly threatening their employment and we would allow ourselves to be classified as “exempt” employees and give up many protections).

The upshot is, I was surprised that I had more than five stories bookmarked and actually had to spend some time tonight deciding which five to include in this post, because I worked such long days this week that I had very little time to pay attention to the news. Yet, I did have to spend some time winnowing it down. And therefore…

Welcome to my Friday Five: Only the top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts).

I continue to feel better every day, so the cold/flu seems to be licked. Work has gotten very busy as some impossible deadlines bear down on us. Which means I haven’t gotten much of my own writing done lately.

But that’s enough about me!

Welcome to my Friday Five: Only the top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts).

Are White Evangelicals Sacrificing The Future In Search Of The Past? “While it is difficult to draw a direct connection between the numerical decline of white evangelical Protestants and their increasing isolation on sexual morality, the views of former evangelical Protestants provide some important clues. Analysis of a 2014 Pew study finds that former white evangelicals are far more likely than current white evangelicals to favor same-sex marriage (60 percent vs. 24 percent) and believe that society should accept homosexuality (67 percent vs. 32 percent). They are also substantially younger.”

I think I might be over the cold. I crossed some tipping point on Wednesday afternoon, the fever went away, most of the symptoms had faded. Thursday morning I woke up feeling fine. So I went into the office—I put in a full day and never hit that wall of exhaustion that happened the previous time I went into the office. I don’t feel 100% well, yet, but I also don’t have anything I can point to as a symptom other than still feeling a little tired.

Enough about that!

Welcome to my Friday Five: Only the top five (IMHO) stories of the week and videos (plus notable obituaries and a recap of my blog posts).

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I write fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and nonfiction. I publish an anthropomorphic sci-fi/space opera literary fanzine. I attend and work on the staff for several anthropormorphics, anime, and science fiction conventions. I live in Seattle with my wonderful husband, still completely amazed that he puts up with me at all.